Organ Trafficking Essay

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Recommended: Human trafficking and international trade

I believe it is clear to say that most, if not every one of us is aware of the choice given to us at the DMV to be put on the back of our driver licenses about whether or not we chose to become an organ donor, but this choice is for when we have already passed. See, what we may not even be aware of is that people everywhere are trafficked for the sole purpose of their organs and these people do NOT consent to the removal of their organs. To my knowledge, often times these people undergo surgeries for the removal of their organs without any anesthesia, so they are fully awake and aware of what is happening to them. Most times these surgeries aren’t even done by professionals or with ‘clean’ tools. In other cases, many people around the world …show more content…

Organ trafficking is a form of human trafficking that occurs all over the world, but for the purpose of this study we will look into the world of organ trafficking in Eastern Europe. Organ trafficking has become an international trade (Lita, 2007) and in fact it is ranked no. 47 out of 50 of activities and products that are sold on the illegal underground economy with a value of $75 million (Havecscope, 2007), while human trafficking ranked higher at no. 16 with a value of $32 billion, that’s billion with a ‘B’ (Havecscope, 2007). Before we get into the world of organ trafficking/transplant tourism in Eastern Europe, I want to go ahead and discuss the ‘financial’ side of organ trafficking. According to the site Havocscope which is a site where one could find information on the global black market the cost to buy and sell a kidney and/or organ on the black market is based upon open source documents. The various prices the Havocscope site lists (last updated Oct. 9, 2013) is shown in U.S. …show more content…

As listed, it shows that on average a person selling a kidney is paid $5,000 and that’s not even the crazy part, because on average a kidney buyer pays an (insane) amount of $150,000! That’s 30x more than what the seller gets paid! Remind you these are only average pays on kidneys alone. Let us take a look at a few more numbers from around the world. Once again, according to Havocscope’s list, the lowest amount paid for a kidney is to a seller in Kenya for an amount of only $650, while the highest amount paid is to a seller in Ukraine (part of Eastern Europe) for an amount of $200,000. As for kidney buyers, the lowest amount paid is in Saudi Arabia for an amount of $16,000, while the highest buying price comes from Singapore for a whopping amount of $300,000! And just for a ‘fun’ fact to know, it shows that a kidney buyer here in the United States would pay an amount of $120,000. Now let’s take a look at a few more countries from Eastern Europe that are listed on the Havocscope black market information site. It shows that kidney sellers in Turkey get paid $10,000 and the traffickers make a $10,000

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